


See Ye Not That Bonny Road

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Eighth Doctor Era, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 13:02:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 12,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11291238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Jamie McCrimmon is wounded, exhausted, and has a song running through his head as if it's trying to tell him something.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> In addition to violence, this story has hints of noncon in some character backgrounds and PTSD. The song quoted in several places is a traditional ballad, but I have to admit that I've been mostly listening to the Steeleye Span adaptation. Brit-picked by Persiflage.

In the gloaming, with a slight mist rising, the moorlands looked like another world. For a moment, Jamie imagined he could see a different landscape overlaying the real one. Jagged rocks, all in varying shades of gray, and sharp-edged black shadows that looked like someone had cut pieces out of reality. If he were _there,_ he could bound across the landscape like a jack rabbit—

Jamie hurt too much to try to shake his head clear, so he settled for blinking several times.

He was too tired to hum to himself, but he had a scrap of music in his mind nonetheless. It took a long moment to put words to it. _For forty days and forty nights, they rode through red blood to the knee . . ._

Well, no need to wonder why he was thinking of _that._

Kirstie appeared by his side, ghost-like. "We have to stop soon," she said softly.

"Nay." This time Jamie did shake his head, and winced. "The only way for a man to outrun a horse is to _keep going._ Take it from someone who's marched."

"We're women, though," Kirstie pointed out. "Except Rob, and he's only ten."

It was true. Jamie wasn't quite sure how he'd ended up leading a ragged band of camp followers, washerwomen, and other army tagalongs. Well, he'd single-handedly charged a trio of Englishmen, intent on rape, who had already ripped Kirstie's dress from bodice to waist—and killed them all, but not before acquiring a nasty head wound that hurt as horribly as any toothache and kept him from seeing out his left eye, and he wasn't even going to _think_ about whether the eye itself was damaged. Not yet. From the look on Kirstie's face, he must have been a frightful sight, bloody and wild-eyed, sword in hand. But he had helped her up gently and asked if she was hurt at all, and it turned out Kirstie had been fleeing with a group, and Jamie was the closest thing they had to an experienced fighting man, which meant they were safer with him than without him. So here they were.

Some obscure impulse had made Jamie search the English kits for a flask and pour whatever inferior whiskey it contained onto the strip of his kilt that he used to bandage his head. Even before the head wound, he'd felt _strange._

"Annis canna keep on like this," Kirstie said. "Neither can Old Mairead, or Rob." Rob was a boy who'd done odd jobs in the camp. Rather to his own embarrassment, Jamie couldn't remember which one Annis was. "We're nobodies. The English will be chasing lairds and officers, not us."

"The order was nae quarter. I saw them bayoneting injured soldiers on the field." And why did he feel as if he'd lived three lifetimes since then? "God only knows what they've been told about us. That we're all ravening devils who eat Lowland babies with our porridge, most likely. They'll be wanting us _all_ dead. We keep moving, and I'll carry the lad if I have to."

Kirstie gave him a very odd look before she faded back to urge the others onward. Jamie knew how she felt; if he could have given _himself_ an odd look, he probably would have. He'd never thought about it before. He'd never wondered what the English had been told. They hated everything good and true because they were English, and why look any closer than that?

_Mud. Cruel, cutting wires and a smell like the sewers of Hell itself. A battleground, but not the fields of Culloden. Here, it was Englishmen mired in hopelessness, Englishmen manning strange cannon, and an Englishman Jamie had to talk into trusting him because they were_ all _victims—_

He hurt and he was tired enough to be almost dizzy. But that didn't account for the odd sensation of double vision. Part of him, the old familiar Jamie, saw English soldiers through the tales of his fellow soldiers: monstrous semi-humans, full of chuckling, casual cruelty. The new, strange Jamie saw ordinary mortals, some wicked, some not. If the battle had gone the other way, would some English drummer boy have found himself leading laundresses and prostitutes across unfamiliar moorland, struggling to stay ahead of (to him) villainous Scots? Jamie knew perfectly well he hadn't marched with an army of angels. Somebody would have volunteered for the pursuit, very possibly for the same reasons as the men he'd killed—

And it was more than just uncomfortable thoughts about the English. Take Claudette, one of the French officers' women. Old Jamie just noticed that she had lovely blonde hair and was quite—well, he had a suspicion that men didn't often talk to her _face._ But New Jamie wondered how much choice she'd had about being an officer's woman, and thought about how it must be, lost and alone in a land so far from home that it might as well be the moon. And Kirstie—an ordinary camp follower, a woman he might have blushed at and looked away from before, but now he saw a person so stubborn that it became almost a virtue, a person who would have kept walking if the Devil himself had been riding on her back. Everything around him seemed _layered,_ somehow.

The thing about exhaustion was that your mind wandered. He realized that the tune was running through his head again. _Oh, they rode on and farther on; the steed went swifter than the wind. Until they came to a desert wide, and living land was left behind._

He could almost believe that was where they were. Beyond the mortal realm, in a strange twilight country full of impossible things, like roads that led straight to heaven and hell, or springs that flowed with all the blood spilt on Earth. _For forty days and forty nights, they rode through red blood to the knee. And he saw neither sun nor moon, but heard the roaring of the sea . . ._

For a delirious moment, Jamie thought he _could_ hear the sea.

And then he heard something he was quite sure of, something that made his stomach clench and his blood chill instantly. Voices, somewhere behind them, and jingling tack.

"We're going to die here," Old Mairead said. She sounded very nearly calm about it.

For an instant, Jamie agreed with her, and it felt almost like a relief.

But it was only an instant. "Over my dead body." He drew his sword. "Kirstie, _keep them moving._ The English are losing the light. They canna track you in the dark."

"But you—"

"I can take care of myself." The rest of the women were hurrying past him. The land was rolling and hilly around here, which was good; the English wouldn't dare take their horses any faster than a walk, not without light, not over country like this. If they could keep marching—if Kirstie and the rest didn't stumble into a bog in the dark—

They would probably still die.

"You'll die," Kirstie said, an unconscious echo of Jamie's mind.

The thought lay like ice in his stomach. Jamie forced a smile. "Aye, well, if the Devil wants me, he'd best send for reinforcements. Go _on,_ lass."

Kirstie shook her head. "Why? Why—for us? We're nothing."

"Because," Jamie said, "you're all people. Because terrible things should be fought. Because you're here and I'm here, and what else would I do?"

Kirstie hesitated, then darted forward and kissed him on the cheek. "Jamie McCrimmon, you're the bravest man I've ever met. Thank you—"

That was when Claudette shrieked.

Jamie and Kirstie whirled together and rushed toward the noise. The women hadn't got far. They had gone around a sort of a rise, and—

For an instant, Jamie thought there was a door into the hillside.

It wasn't, quite. There was a small structure set close against the rise. But the light coming out of it was as bright and gold as afternoon sunlight—it definitely _wasn't_ firelight of any sort—and all of Jamie's instincts, every bone in his body, still said _door into the hill._ What's more, there was a man in front of Claudette, talking softly and urgently to her—comforting her—and Jamie's heart said, with utter certainty, _not a mortal man._ He was dressed very finely, for a start, a velvet coat and pure white ruffles at his throat, and no mortal born would be daft enough to wear that when tramping around a moor. His hair was long, brown, and curly—too long for a fighter—and there was something a bit too clean about him; _he_ hadn't spent the day pushing through knee-high heather. Which meant that he had come out of the door. Which meant—

The man turned and saw Jamie, sword still drawn. And the look on his face—it was as if he'd seen his children gutted in front of him.

Jamie thought, _and see ye not that bonny road, which winds about the ferny brae? That is the road to fair Elfland, where you and I this night maun gae._ No-one ever walked that road and came back unchanged, but some—like Thomas the Rhymer, so long ago—were changed for the better. What would have happened if he had followed a faerie jester instead of a faerie queen, and had gained true sight instead of true speech?

Was that what New Jamie was? Not quite second sight, not the ability to see the invisible, but the gift of seeing things as they were?

He lowered his sword, and the man's look of shocked sorrow abated a little. "Everyone through the door," Jamie said. There was a storm of bizarre images and wild thoughts in his head, but for all that, he felt almost like laughing.

"But the light—" Mairead protested.

"Through the door, _move!"_ The last word was a shout. "It's all right," Jamie said more softly, not taking his eyes off the long-haired man. "I know him." Exactly how or from where he knew him, Jamie decided to worry about later. His mind said _stranger,_ but his heart said _friend._

"You, too," the man said. He sounded English, but Jamie discovered that he didn't care.

Beyond the door, Jamie could hear one of the women say, "But it's—" and another say, "Oh, Lord have mercy." He wasn't worried about _that,_ either. He was already moving towards the door himself.

"You first," he told the man.

"Jamie, listen to me. We'll all be safe inside. You aren't going to stay out here and make some heroic last stand, because you don't _need_ to."

"And I don't mean to, but I've got the sword and that means I watch your back."

The man met his eyes for a moment—how could someone be that familiar when you didn't even know their name?—and then murmured something that sounded suspiciously like _forgot how stubborn you can be._ He went inside.

Jamie had already half-turned to follow him when the Englishman came around the rise. The man raised his musket, and Jamie thought, as if he had all the time in the world, _just a pace away from safety? I'm not dying like that, it's ridiculous._

The Englishman fired.

For a moment, Jamie thought that either true sight or the closeness of death let him see the musket ball as it flew. Somewhere in the back of his mind, an unremembered voice whispered, _time is relative._

Then he realized that the musket ball had just _stopped._

It hung in the air a few feet away from him. He blinked at it.

Jamie felt someone come out of the door behind him, but he kept his eyes on the Englishman, who had gone from staring blankly to staring with rising fear.

"You have no business here," the man in velvet said quietly. "I suggest you leave.

The Englishman looked at him wildly, and perhaps _he_ caught a hint of the otherworldly too, because he stepped back a pace. Jamie grinned, aware that with his wound it would make him look completely mad. He raised his sword and made as if to charge.

The Englishman turned tail and fled back the way he came.

It was probably relief that made the sword seem heavy. Jamie found himself laughing a little, and choked it down; if he let himself laugh, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stop. The man in velvet cleared his throat very deliberately before putting his hand on Jamie's shoulder—probably wise, considering the length of steel he was holding. "Jamie," he said, "go _inside."_

"Aye, I expect you're right." Jamie spiked his sword into the ground and left it standing there, quivering slightly. "Did you do that? With the musket ball."

"In a manner of speaking. You could say the TARDIS did it for me."

Inside the tiny structure was a large, richly appointed room that seemed almost as if someone had put a sitting room beneath a church. It surprised Jamie somewhat; some part of him had been expecting something different. The women were huddled quite near the entrance, apparently unwilling to venture any further into this strange enchanted place. Old Mairead tugged Rob's shirt off, over his protests, and turned it inside out before putting it back on him. There was a comfortable looking armchair across the room from Jamie, complete with a rather disorderly pile of books next to it. At the moment, it seemed far too much work to get there, so Jamie put his back against the wall and slid down to the floor.

"Jamie." The long-haired man knelt to have a better look at him. "What happened to your eye?"

"Got shot, but mostly he missed." 

The man peeled the improvised bandage away. Jamie clenched his teeth and endured. "Not," the man murmured, "by much. The eye itself is intact, although I can't promise that it's undamaged. The _socket—_ will be a problem. It was a glancing shot at a very lucky angle for you, but the size of the musket ball means that—no, no, no, no, no. Jamie, don't go to sleep."

"Can if I want." He didn't bother to open his good eye. "It's safe here."

"Yes, it is, but you were recently shot in the head. It isn't a good idea—"

"You'll take care of it." He was mumbling slightly. "You'll take care of me. I know you will. I know _you."_ He opened his eye just enough to see the man's concerned face. Very vivid eyes, the man had, rather older than the rest of his features. And gentle. Whatever else he was, he was gentle. "Don't I?"

"Yes, you do. We were very good friends. Although I have no idea how you can remember—"

"Thought so," Jamie said, and passed out.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter makes a few references to the second Doctor story "The Moonbase." Basically, Jamie injures himself on the moon by horsing around in the low gravity, and while convalescent, believes that the "phantom piper," a McCrimmon bogeyman, is after him.

When Jamie next awoke, it was to a confusion of voices and someone trying to put something over his nose and mouth. He batted it away. He was on his back, and the person looming over him didn't seem to have a proper face. He muttered, "Piper. I willna go with you, never . . ."

"Not _again."_ The voice was strange, and it should have been familiar—or was that familiar where it should have been strange? "Jamie, listen to me. These people are going to put your face back together, and to do that, you have to let them put the mask on you."

"We sailed beyond the moon," Jamie said. He didn't know where the words came from, but he could feel the truth of them as he said them. "Ogres like great green crayfish. Men who ride inside winged beasties . . ."

"Yes! Yes, that's right. I saved your life and you saved mine, a hundred times over. You can trust me. Please—trust me, Jamie."

"If they murder me," Jamie slurred, "I'll haunt you."

"They're not going to murder you. Just breathe. Trust me, and breathe in."

Jamie resigned himself to the inevitable, and did.

~~~~~~~~

When he woke after _that,_ he was in a bed. He felt slightly drunk, which was an odd way to feel upon waking up, but not entirely unpleasant. Somewhere close at hand, there was a woman singing. "Her skirt was of the grass green silk, her mantle of the velvet fine . . ."

The killing fields of Culloden— _red blood to the knee_ —a woman backing away from three English soldiers, head shaking no, no; the endless, punishing march across trackless moors, because the bulk of the fleeing army was following the roads and the full force of the English would follow. And then— _road to fair Elfland—_ a door, a man, and a thousand dreams that shone more vividly than life. Cursed armor that ate the hearts out of the men who were forced into it. Lanterns brighter than any flame. Great clawed crab-beasties as canny as scholars. So many monsters, so many dark things, but that was all right because there were friendships and wonderful times as well, and because dark things needed to be fought, and because there was no-one in all the world who could do what they could—

Jamie opened his eye. The other one seemed to be covered by a bandage, but at least it wasn't as ferociously painful as it had been.

Kirstie—it was Kirstie singing—looked up from her mending the instant he stirred.

"Where am I?" Jamie said.

Kirstie looked alarmed. "I told you last time you woke. You dinna remember? You talked about true sight, and grand ships that look like little boxes, and Thomas the Rhymer—"

Which, Jamie thought, was why she had been singing that song. "I must've been half asleep," he said. He looked around.

The room was mostly white, which was obscurely comforting. There was a pane of remarkably flawless glass on the wall, but it was dark. Not a window, Jamie thought, but—images tickled the back of his memory—some sort of scrying glass. There was a sort of metal rack beside his bed, and transparent tube leading—

Kirstie jumped up and put her hand over his as he grabbed for it. "I'm supposed to tell you," she said, very quickly, "that it's called an ivy and it's helping you, not hurting you; it's the reason you're not parched to the bone right now and you're not to touch it. The laird Doctor said."

Jamie stared at the thing with a bit of revulsion. There was clear stuff over it, but he could still clearly see a needle going under his skin. Folks shouldn't go around sticking things into people. Especially not when people were too deeply asleep to clip them upside the head for it, that was just _cheating._ But if it was supposed to help him . . .

"What is this place?" he said.

"I'm not sure. The laird Doctor said a lot, but I dinna understand it all. But I think—" She looked awed. "I think we might be on the _moon."_

Jamie shook his head—ah, _that's_ where all the pain had gone. It had just been waiting for its chance. Sneaky. "Nay, the moon doesn't have a scrap of color to it. All gray-silver rocks, and a man can bound about like a cricket—although that's not to say that you _should,_ because when you land on your head, it'll bleed just the same . . ." He trailed off and looked at Kirstie, who was staring at him. "How do I know that?"

She shook her head wordlessly.

"Where's—" The name _should_ have been as familiar to him as breathing. Shouldn't it?

"The laird Doctor said he'd take everyone back to Scotland," Kirstie said. "Except Claudette; he promised to take her back where she came from. I think she said—a border? Something like that. Only I said I wasna leaving you here all alone, and he said I could wait with you until he came back. And then he gave me a new dress, and a needle and thread to mend my old one. Two dresses!" She laughed slightly, helplessly. "I feel like a grand lady."

It was a fine dress, too, robin's egg blue with a slight shimmer to the fabric. "Aye, well, you look like a princess," Jamie said, and was a bit taken aback when Kirstie turned pink beneath her freckles. True sight and friends he didn't know, that was peculiar enough, but suddenly knowing how to talk to lasses? _That_ was strong magic. "Er. Is that what he's called, then? The laird Doctor?" The _laird_ bit didn't seem to fit somehow, despite the richness of his clothes.

"I thought you knew him!" Kirstie looked frightened, and Jamie realized that she was taking a tremendous amount on faith. She might even have eaten faerie food, trusting the Doctor's word that it wouldn't trap her here forever.

"I do. I do, it's all right." She didn't look convinced. "It's just—it's like a dream. All these pictures, but nae—nae—"

"No words to hang them on," the Doctor said quietly, slipping in the door.

Kirstie gave him a somewhat awkward curtsey, which he didn't seem to notice. Jamie said, "Aye, that's it. It's all right, though. I've worked out what happened."

"Really?"

"In the stories, people fall asleep in a faerie circle and a hundred years pass outside. So why not months of traveling in the space of a single night? Time is—" He stopped.

"Relative," the Doctor supplied.

It sounded right. Or, at least, it didn't sound wrong. "Aye, that," Jamie said.

"But I looked very different back then; it was long, long ago, my time. How did you know it was me?"

"You canna change your eyes. Maybe the color, but not the—the—bits that look like _you._ Besides, only a daft pillock would expect Robin Goodfellow to wear the same face every time you meet him."

The Doctor blinked several times, but all he said was, "I prefer Doctor."

"Aye," Jamie said, "but y'see, I dinna remember _that_ before you told me. Was I enchanted to forget?"

"Yes," the Doctor said. "And I think, on one of my kind, it would have worked. We've been sapient for a very long time; language is part of our minds on almost every level. But you—there are so many primitive, unexplored parts of your brain, places with neither words nor logic, and they didn't bother to overwrite those. They probably thought it would all stay subconscious—in dreams."

In other words, the memories might have been chased out of his mind, but they'd hidden in his heart, down among nearly-faded childhood memories and songs so familiar he couldn't even remember learning them. That made sense. Jamie nearly nodded, but caught himself in time.

The Doctor took Jamie's hand, and Jamie remembered the feel of it, cool and familiar. Occasionally grabbing onto each other when frightened—well, maybe not so occasionally, because there were a great many fearful things in the world. A comforting contact, so familiar that it seemed to make Jamie's head hurt a little less. "I'm sorry," the Doctor said. "I would have stopped it from happening, if I could."

"Not your fault," Jamie told him. "I remember—I _think_ I remember—" He was silent for a moment. "We'd made landfall in a corner of Hell," he said slowly, "men condemned to endless war, and when you couldna outplay the Devil himself, you called all the armies of Faerie to cleanse the place. And they swept all the poor damned souls back to Earth, and took you away for judgment, because you'd stolen—"

Kirstie was staring at the Doctor with awe and a bit of terror. "Stolen the TARDIS," the Doctor said, "but, Jamie, it wasn't Hell. And I'm not from Faerie."

"Any place that makes men go to war forever," Jamie said firmly, "is as close to Hell as mortal men should see, so if that _wasna_ Hell, I don't want to know what is. The point is, you dinna do this to me. They did."

"Yes. But they won't do it again. There _is_ a reason why I waited so long—my time—to come help you. There are dark forces moving in the wider universe, and the people who would have stopped me before have more than enough to worry about. Sometimes I'm afraid . . ." He trailed off. "Never mind. How are you feeling?"

"My head feels like I've an axe stuck in it, my feet feel like I've marched across all of Scotland, my throat is dry as a desert, and some daft fool stuck a needle in my arm. Which isna making me _any_ less parched and has naught to do with ivy, nae matter what they say. So—better than I have any right to be feeling. Where are we?"

"Diamond Point Intensive Treatment Center on Moon-of-July. July being a superterrene planet, in this context, not a month. They have an excellent record with reconstructive surgery. Although I think the head surgeon is upset that I insisted on reattachment of the original retina rather than a medical plastic replacement. There are only so many anachronisms I can slip by . . ."

"It's all right," Jamie confided to Kirstie. "You just have to say 'what?' until the answer comes out in plain English. You'll catch on."

"That _was_ plain English!" the Doctor said plaintively, and Jamie smiled. Pain or no pain—and right now it was definitely pain—he still had a distinct feeling that everything was right with the world.


	3. Chapter 3

Everything being right—like time, apparently—was relative. Jamie was less worried about the pain than the exhaustion, which didn't creep up on him as much as leap on him and dig in its claws. The nurses came in regularly to give him some medicine that removed the pain, but it also made Jamie drift off in the middle of his sentences. They seemed extremely distressed when he demanded that they stop putting it in his ivy (which still didn't look like ivy), or at least cut his ration in half, because he'd rather hurt than be muzzy-headed all the time.

Kirstie had assumed that the nurses were more faerie folk, and addressed them as lairds and ladies when she spoke to them. Jamie was fairly certain they were mortals, and told her so. Of course, with all the words stolen out of the relevant memories, he couldn't be _sure_ that the people he'd seen on his journey had all been mortals, but—they felt like it. And these people seemed ordinary enough. True, they _looked_ a bit different from Scots, but that was logical enough; they weren't. And there was nothing inhuman or alarming about them, no glowing eyes or sharp teeth.

Of course, the Doctor wasn't what one would expect from faerie folk. The Good Neighbors were proud, beautiful, heartless, and deadly dangerous, if you listened to songs and stories. The Doctor was proud, true enough, and his current face wasn't a strain to look upon, even though Jamie preferred the comforting plainness of his old one. And he could be deadly dangerous if you crossed him, but the surest way to cross him was to threaten ordinary mortal lives, people he'd never met and never would. He had more heart than ten ordinary men.

Just for that, Jamie had followed him through Hell itself, or near as made no difference. And he'd do it again in an instant.

He slept, and woke, and slept again. There was always someone with him when he woke up. Kirstie had apparently asked the Doctor if _he_ needed any mending done, and was presented with enough quilting material for a family of eight. "And all the 'scraps' are much too grand to be scraps," she confided to Jamie. "But there's no telling him that. When I said I couldn't possibly use them, they were too fine, he got me _another basketful._ I don't—" She looked down at her hands, and Jamie realized why she had wanted mending; otherwise, she'd be picking at things from sheer nervousness. "I keep being afraid—everyone here treats me like a lady, but I'm as far from noble as they come. I'm a common bastard who can't even pick her father out of a crowd, and I've never owned more than I could carry on my back. Those men, those English—when you cut them down, I thought for a heartbeat that you wanted me for yourself, because—well, because that's what I'm _for._ And when _he_ finds out he's been treating a whore like a noblewoman . . ." She twisted her hands. Thinking of faerie wrath, Jamie thought, and faerie punishments.

A fearsome notion, to be sure, but as wrong as it was possible to be. "He'll not care," Jamie said, with utter certainty.

"How can you say that?"

"Because I know him. And because _I_ don't care, except that I'd like to find all the folk who told you that's all you're good for and give 'em a nice swift kick. It's—" If the faeries hadn't stolen his words, could he have articulated what he was thinking? "If the world was right, you _would_ be a lady. You'd have a castle of your own and people would never dare call you names, not even behind your back. Because you helped me keep the women from sitting down and waiting to die, and there are times—there are times when _not dying_ is a brave and important thing." Jamie looked at Kirstie's worried face, and made his voice deliberately softer. "And the Doctor knows it. He understands. He's not just canny, Kirstie. He's wise. Don't tell him I said that, because he thinks highly enough of himself—but it's true."

He felt, Jamie thought later after Kirstie had gone back to her piecework, rather as if he was a captain and Kirstie was his soldier. Which was an odd sort of thing to think about a lass, but it was more comfortable than viewing all lasses everywhere as a lovely and slightly terrifying mystery which might suddenly despise him if he broke some obscure rule, or (much, much worse) giggle at him. Another fragment of true sight, another piece of travelling with the Doctor: the realization that women were sometimes right, and sometimes wrong, and wanted things, and got frightened of things, and altogether _made sense,_ or at least as much sense as any man did.

He thought of one anonymous face, terrifyingly sheltered but ready to try new things all the same, and another, clever as could be but not always practical. He and the Doctor hadn't travelled alone. And as soon as he could, he had to ask the Doctor their names, because it was wrong, utterly _wrong,_ to forget something like that. If Jamie could remember the faeries who stole those names, he would have hated them more than he'd ever hated an enemy.

~~~~~~~~

He couldn't move.

His head hurt like someone had twisted a drill into it, and he couldn't move. But even without turning his head, he could see, somehow. The red-coated men advancing across the killing field. A wounded soldier reaching up to them, imploring, suffering too much to care that they were the enemy. And then the quick downward stroke, the bayonet coming back up crimson. _No quarter._

And now they were coming for him. Killing, and killing, and never stopping. The rise of the musket, the stabbing motion, again and again, Kirstie and Rob and his father and his mother and the Doctor—oh, God, he had to _make_ himself move, he had to stop them from killing the Doctor, but he couldn't and those familiar eyes stared wide, robbed of everything that made the Doctor who he was, and now they were standing over Jamie and the blade came down and—

Jamie came awake with a shout.

Someone took his hand. "It's all right," the Doctor's new voice said. "It was just a dream. It's all right."

Jamie shook his head very slightly, not able to articulate his thoughts. It wasn't just a dream. It was Culloden Moor. His life was forever divided into Before Culloden and After Culloden, and he was one of the lucky ones. Horror had a name, and that name was No Quarter. "I saw them kill you," Jamie said hoarsely. 

"That was a dream. I'm right here, and I'm a hard person to kill."

Yes, but even his voice was different. It was a good voice, soft and strong, and (Jamie suspected) capable of being entirely spellbinding when he wanted it to be, but just at the moment, Jamie wanted _his_ Doctor. His Doctor, who hadn't cared enough about clothes to ever wear a velvet coat. His Doctor, whom evildoers always underestimated because he was small and funny and encouraged them to talk about themselves until they were screaming about laying waste to the world, which was when he would say, "Ah, now I know _exactly_ how mad you are, thank you," and spring his latest trap. His Doctor, so very frightened sometimes, so very brave. Moving forward, running toward trouble, not because he was invincible or even mighty, but because he could help and that was simply what you did.

"Can you change back?" Jamie said.

There was a long silence. The room was dim right now, dimmer than a single candle, and Jamie couldn't see the Doctor's face well enough to read his expression. "Not without sacrificing a good portion of my life," the Doctor said finally.

"Oh." It had actually been a request, not a question, but Jamie was hardly going to mention that after such an answer. "That's nae fair at all."

"It makes sense," the Doctor said, "philosophically speaking. Life moves onward, always. Chicks don't go back into their eggs, moths don't turn into caterpillars, and Time Lords—don't change back. There are ways to adjust one's physical form somewhat _without_ regenerating, but I—don't have access to anything like that."

"Time Lord," Jamie repeated. It certainly sounded grand enough to be a sort of faerie.

"Do you know," the Doctor mused, "I don't believe I ever used that word, travelling with you."

"Why dinna you?"

"I'm not sure. I think perhaps I didn't want to emphasize the differences between us. Because I am different, Jamie. An older sort of being. I perceive time and space in ways you don't have words for. All the possibilities of a stone, or a tree, or a human life, spilling into the future like a waterfall, and now and again I catch glimpses through the spray. Spirals, ferns, strange attractors . . ." He trailed off. For the last sentence or so, Jamie thought, he had been talking half to himself.

"You thought—what? That we'd turn against you for being unearthly? That's daft." And the thought that the Doctor hadn't trusted him, _that_ was a knife in the gut.

"What? Oh, no, no, no! Jamie, you're one of the most startlingly adaptable people I've ever known. You came from a time and place where they still burnt witches, and yet you react to a flying machine with curiosity and enthusiasm. I knew that even if I showed you some technology or some ability that frightened you to the bone, you would learn to accept it or go mad trying, because—well, because it was _me._ I was afraid—" Jamie felt, rather than heard the Doctor sigh. "I suppose I was afraid that I might alter your perception of the world so much that you could never fit back into the time you came from. That's what the other Time Lords were trying to prevent, you know, when they took your memories. They thought they were being kind."

Jamie was quiet for a moment. "Did they ask?" It was a rhetorical question. He would never have agreed to sacrifice an instant of his journey, even the most horrible instant.

"Jamie—"

"Did they _ask?"_

"No more than you would ask a horse which way you should ride it," the Doctor admitted.

"Then they're _not_ forgiven."

There was another silence. "That's fair," the Doctor acknowledged finally.

Jamie half-closed his eye. Just a little talking, and he felt like he'd been marching all day. That wasn't fair at all. There were a lot of things that weren't fair. "I do wish," he said wistfully, "that I could hear your old voice. Just for a bit. I'm never asking you to give any of your life, you understand, I just—"

"Miss it."

"Aye."

"You know," the Doctor said slowly, "what I was saying, about abilities that might frighten you—I wonder if I might have underestimated you."

Jamie opened his eye again. "What are you talking about?"

A quick smile, barely visible in the darkness. "Close your eyes, Jamie."

"Why?"

The Doctor brushed his hand over Jamie's face, covering his eye. _"Jamie, do as I say, will you?"_

It wasn't his new voice. It was the old one. Exasperated, affectionate, not quite remembered, but as familiar as the sun.

Jamie jumped. "How're you doing that, then?"

"It's called telepathic suggestion," the Doctor said, in his new voice, "and I've never been able to come up with an explanation that doesn't make it sound like magic. Are you all right with that?"

"Oh, a glamorie," Jamie said. "Aye, of course I'm all right."

There was a short pause. "Jamie, I'm still not a faerie."

"How do you know? What if your folk are where the songs come from? What if a Time Lady took a fancy to Thomas the Rhymer, all those years ago, and rode off into the sky with him?"

"Well, partly because there are other beings that . . ." The Doctor trailed off. "Actually, you may have a point."

"Aye, I usually do," Jamie said, and smiled. "Do the voice again. Tell me something."

_"What do you want to know?"_

"I remember we travelled with a lassie. She was bonny, I know that, and I remember she dinna know much of the world . . . and I remember her screaming at some creepy-crawly. Who was that?"

_"Be fair, Jamie, it was a two meter long centipede. And as I recall, your reaction was to bung a knife at it."_

"Aye, and I would have got it through the eye, too, if someone hadna grabbed onto me and spoilt my aim."

_"I haven't the slightest inkling what you could possibly be talking about. And you're remembering Victoria, I believe. She_ was _easily startled, although not so easily panicked as one might assume. There was one time . . ."_


	4. Chapter 4

Jamie wouldn't have been at all surprised—upset, but not surprised—if it turned out that the hospital was harboring evil alien beasties in the basement and feeding them the wounded, simply because (in his experience) that sort of thing went on more than you'd expect. When things _did_ go wrong, it was in a fashion that blindsided him completely.

He was out wandering the halls at the time, which the nurses called _exercising,_ and Jamie called _if I have to stare at the same four walls for another eyeblink I'll not be responsible for any holes in them._ The Doctor had made the scrying glass show some sort of forest, but he'd forgot to tell Jamie how to control it, and it didn't take him long to work out that it was just showing the same few moments over and over again. The pain in his head, which had been horrible but natural enough, had slowly transformed itself into a sort of bone-deep itching. And complaining to the Doctor was no good, because it just produced a giddy flood of words about nanny-mites or some such gibberish, and the mere thought of mites (nanny or otherwise) made Jamie itch _worse._

The nurses had removed the ivy, at least. They hadn't removed the needle—they said there was always a small possibility he might need it again—and it was driving Jamie half mad, because it meant he couldn't move his arm properly for fear of damaging himself. Still, he'd finally got his clothes back, and he hadn't caught fever or any of the other nasty things he knew came with grave wounds, so he was altogether in a reasonably good mood when a bland, pleasant-looking fellow came up and said, "Mind if I walk with you a moment?"

"Aye, go right ahead," Jamie said cheerily.

"Thanks. My name's Oscar, by the way."

"Jamie McCrimmon," Jamie said, and shook the man's hand.

"Good to meet you, Jamie. I have to ask, where are you from? I don't think I've heard that accent before."

"Aye, well, you havna been to Scotland, then." Although he could have conceivably visited the Lowlands, which were _technically_ Scotland. A little bit Scotland. In an England-y sort of way.

"No, I haven't. Is that a colony?"

"Never! We've been there as long as the hills." In other words, Jamie was very, very far from home. Well, he was accustomed to that, or he had been. "How about you? Where're you from, then?"

"Tiarda Dome, originally," the man said. "But I've lived in Diamond Point for years."

"Oh, aye."

"You have no idea where that is, do you?"

"Of course I do! Diamond Point is _here._ In Moon-of-July."

"Yes, of course. My mistake." Oscar walked for a moment in silence. "Have you had a chance to see it yet? July, I mean."

"Nay, that I haven't . . ."

"Well, you shouldn't visit Diamond Point without at least taking a look. The view is one of the city's prime attractions, you know—center of Nearside and all that. Do you want to walk around the hospital grounds for a few moments? I promise, I'll call a nurse if you get tired."

"Oh, you don't have to worry about _that,"_ Jamie said. "I've been on forced marches. This is hardly a stroll. And the Doctor gave me new shoes. See?" He bounced a little bit. They had some magical springy substance in their soles, something that Jamie reckoned would keep blisters at bay for hours, if not days. Any man who'd marched with an army knew the value of decent footwear, and Jamie would have defended _these_ shoes in single combat if he had to. "He says," he added, "they're a sort I liked before. But . . ." Probably best not to try to explain his word-robbed memory to a perfect stranger, especially since Jamie didn't understand the particulars himself. "How do we get to the hospital ground, then?"

The answer, apparently, was a small moving metal room. Jamie did his best to look unimpressed and worldly-wise.

Apparently the hospital grounds were a sort of courtyard. Jamie followed Oscar through doors that opened on their own and found himself in a garden. The vegetation was rather more pink than it should be, but the small winding foot-paths and benches made sense. He took a deep breath and was rather disappointed that it smelled exactly the same as the hospital air.

"Take a look," Oscar said, and pointed up at the sky.

It was night, although the lanterns around the garden made it much brighter than any night Jamie was familiar with. There was a great moon-looking thing hanging in the sky, far more colorful than the moon ever got; it had blue, purple, tan, and white, like some sort of multicolored gemstone. It was, Jamie thought, quite beautiful.

That wasn't the thing that made him stiffen in alarm. The sky itself seemed to be sectioned into panels, like panes of glass. Jamie knew it hadn't looked the same, but he had the distinct feeling that crystal skies were danger—crystal skies meant very bad things—

"You've never seen it before," Oscar said quietly. "Have you."

"And what if I haven't?"

"How did you get here, exactly?"

"The Doctor brought me. Ask _him."_

"Yes," Oscar said, "that's what I wanted to talk to you about. The Doctor seems to have total power of attorney over your treatment, but he won't tell us where you came from, how you got here, or how you were injured. He's also made several questionable decisions, including turning off your Wynd-O for the first few days and vetoing any use of surgical plastic, the latter of which will add at least a week to your recovery time. You're almost never left alone, and the young woman who watches you when the Doctor is gone seems cowed and fearful. Most disturbing of all, you seem to believe you deserve to be in pain; you demanded that the nurses reduce your DEM-17 dosage at a time when it would have caused unendurable agony. Jamie, you need to understand, the Doctor is not your master and he doesn't own you. If you're being abused—and being forced to march is abuse, however it was justified—my staff and I can help you. I can make sure that you never have to see him, or think about him, ever ag—"

He stopped, his eyes bugging out. Quite rightly, too, because the point of Jamie's dirk was resting delicately on his Adam's apple.

"I remember," Jamie said.

"Remember what, exactly?" Oscar's voice was even, if somewhat strangled-sounding.

"Crystal skies. The faerie castle lies beneath crystal skies." Not quite like the one above Jamie now—the faeries' skies were all of one piece—but close enough that his blood was rushing fast, his heart pounding, and his mind going _no, no, never again. "You_ took me from the Doctor. You put me back beside a killing ground. You tried to steal my memories away. Flying beasties, men on the moon, nae problem. But some things should never be." He lowered the dirk, and Oscar took a relieved breath—which caught in his throat when he realized where Jamie had lowered the dirk _to._ "Someday," he told the man, "I'll leave the Doctor. But all the hosts of Hell canna make me forget him. I don't know how many bollocks the Good Neighbors are born with, but faeries who go after my memories have _none at all._ D'ye ken?"

"Jamie," Oscar choked, "you're very confused."

"I'm not confused," Jamie said, "I'm escaping. And you're helping."

"Jamie, please listen to me. I realize the Doctor is a very charismatic, attractive man, but he isn't worth—"

"He's worth a hundred of you. Now, you're going to walk just a bit ahead of me—like that—and look friendly, or we'll see what color a coward's liver is."

"How did you even get that knife?" Oscar hissed desperately over his shoulder.

Jamie poked him with it. "You let the Doctor give me back my clothes," he explained. "This is clothes. And it's a dirk, not a knife. March or bleed, your choice."

Oscar pinned a horrified-looking smile on his face and marched.

~~~~~~~~

They made it to the edge of the garden without incident, which Jamie thought was shocking laxity on the part of the guards. He'd fully expected to have to clip Oscar behind the ear and run for it.

At the edge of the garden, there was a large, stony place with dozens of glass-and-metal beasties lined up in ranks. Jamie would have been at a loss except that he saw a woman settling herself inside one, apparently quite comfortably, after which the glass beastie broke ranks and zipped away. Jamie gestured to the nearest one. "Open it."

"I can't."

"Dirk," Jamie explained.

"I _can't,_ it isn't my car! Look, I'm just an administrator, I don't have override codes—if you want something like that, you'd have to talk to the police. I can call them for you, if you—"

"I'm not _thick._ Take me to your car, then."

It was, inevitably, quite a ways away. Jamie kept expecting recapture with every step; all his muscles were tense. It was _worse,_ in a way, than fighting for your life, because at least fights for your life happened so fast they were generally over before you had a chance to dwell on the fear. Oscar kept shooting worried glances all around him, but eventually he stopped next to a blue-flanked car-beastie. "I'll have to use my comp to open it."

"Do it."

A comp, evidently, was a sort of bracelet with a little window on it. Oscar tapped at it until Jamie was almost ready to poke him as a reminder, but finally the car flashed its eyes and squawked an acknowledgement, which very nearly earned the fool thing a dirk in the face—if that front bit with the glass eyes was its face. Jamie wasn't quite sure, and wasn't about to ask. "You're the one who knows how the reins work," he said, "you get in first. No sudden moves."

Oscar got in, and Jamie followed him, awkwardly. "What do you hope to accomplish with this?" he said. "Where are you going to go?"

"Somewhere," Jamie said, "where nobody puts Damn Seventeen in my ivy to make me sleep all the time while they do Lord knows what." And what they would have accomplished if the Doctor hadn't been keeping faithful watch—didn't bear thinking about, Jamie decided, so he tried very hard not to. He ripped the clear stuff off his skin with his teeth, preparatory to pulling the needle out.

"Don't!" Oscar almost grabbed at him, making Jamie's dirk flash back to his throat. "Please, don't, not like that. You could pierce a blood vessel, or—let me do it."

"Nae tricks."

"No tricks," Oscar agreed. "Er, I don't have a microstunner, so it will sting, though—are you sure you want to—"

_"Do_ it."

He was actually quite gentle about it, and it didn't sting at all, just a slight twinge. "Did I hurt you?" Oscar said anxiously.

Jamie flexed his arm, enjoying the freedom of movement. "What, with _that?"_

"Well, even if you can't feel it now, it'll bruise up. You should probably have a capillary fixative—we have some back inside—"

Jamie was quite sure he didn't have any caterpillars in his arm, and if he did, they didn't want fixing. "Now you're just making things up. Come on, get this beastie awake and moving."

Oscar stared at Jamie for a moment, ivy needle dangling from nerveless fingers. "You've never seen a car before," he whispered.

"Aye, and what if I haven't? _You've_ never seen Scotland." Jamie didn't add _I win,_ but only because he felt it was somewhat self-evident. "Wake him up."

Waking the beastie involved pressing a round green shape, which Jamie noted carefully for future reference. The reins were a sort of odd yoke—Jamie wasn't sure what else to call it, but he thought he could steer the creature if he had to. Faster and slower was a more obscure process, but Oscar evidently knew what he was doing. The beastie rose out of its resting place, hovered, and swept gracefully over all the ranks of somnolent cars.


	5. Chapter 5

By the time the excitable blue lights appeared behind them, Jamie had already begun to wonder if he wasn't doing something rash.

Oscar's threats of never seeing the Doctor again, that was something to escape from, all right. But the Doctor had no way of knowing which way he'd gone, and Jamie had a nagging feeling that taking his eyes off the Doctor meant he was already being menaced by bears. Or crayfish-ogres. Or giant weasels, for all he knew; the point was that _Doctor_ and _probably perfectly safe_ were flatly refusing to go together in his mind, no matter how he shoved. And then there was Kirstie, who was new to all this, and, in a funny sort of way, Jamie's man-at-arms—which made him responsible for her well-being.

There was also the growing suspicion that Jamie didn't understand everything that was going on. He knew that the Doctor would have gone to his kin if it was the only way to save Jamie's life. He might even have decided not to warn Jamie, for obscure cunning reasons that would only get explained later, if at all. But Oscar—Jamie couldn't see Oscar as one of the Doctor's people, somehow. He seemed honestly bewildered by what was happening to him. The few impressions Jamie had of the true faeries consisted of terrifyingly remote pride, gazes that swept past him as if he were furniture—

"Those are the police," Oscar said, when the blue lights appeared. "They have override codes on all aircars. You should just give yourself up now. They won't hurt you. You're obviously a very upset, confused—"

"Man with a dirk," Jamie reminded him. "I dinna tell you to land the beastie; get him back in the sky!"

"I'm _not._ The police are doing it."

The flashing blue car-beasties moved forward to surround Oscar's animal as it settled. A larger, dark gray one with black glass settled behind them. It gave Jamie a bit of a chill. At least with the other cars, a man could see what was happening inside. With that one . . . it didn't look friendly at all.

"Fine," Jamie said. "Open the door. Tell them that if they don't let this car-beastie off the ground, I'll slit you open like a fish."

Oscar swallowed. "You make it sound like you've done it."

Jamie didn't know if he meant gutting fish or killing men, but the cold, nasty dread in his stomach made him choose the second. "Killed men? Aye." He hoped he sounded ruthless rather than desperate.

"Oh, gods." Oscar opened the door and repeated the message faithfully, including _car-beastie_ and the exact words of the threat. His throat worked for a moment, and then he said quietly, "Did the Doctor—make you?"

"What? Of course not, that's daft! You don't know him at all, if that's what you think."

Policemen were getting out of their cars, but they weren't approaching yet; they appeared to be hiding behind their doors, in fact. "Why, then?" Oscar said.

He seemed almost to be begging for an answer. "Culloden," Jamie told him finally.

"I don't know what that means."

"The Battle of Culloden. Where the Highland army was cut down like grass. I crawled to the edge of the battlefield. I crawled over wounded men and dying men, through blood and innards. That's the only reason I wasna shot, there at the end; I kept my head low. But when I got where I could stand up at last, an Englishman saw me. He raised his musket, I ran at him with a sword. I was faster." Jamie was silent for a long moment. "The Doctor saved me from that," he went on, in a lower voice. "And you, or your masters—you dinna just put me back where the English could find me. You took what I'd _learned._ What wickedness is. That I don't _have_ to choose a side and march. That compared to the beasties out in the dark, anything with a soul is my brother. _You stole that._ And if I have to spill your blood to keep it from happening again—"

_"Drop the knife!"_

Jamie jumped at the volume of the voice. He pricked Oscar slightly, and the man cried out.

"Tell them," Jamie said, "that if they don't let us go, I'll kill you."

"Let me talk to them. Let me explain what you're going through."

"Just tell them what I told you!"

"Jamie, not all the weapons pointed at you are stunners, and some of them _can_ kill you before you have a chance to hurt me. I know what to say to these people. Let me help."

_"I said, drop the knife!"_

Jamie grimaced. "Go on, then," he said.

Oscar swallowed, then filled his lungs. "This man," he bellowed, "is experiencing a paranoid episode! He's in great distress right now! Please do not shoot! I repeat: _please_ do not shoot!"

"What did you say to them?" Jamie demanded suspiciously.

"That you have reasons for what you're doing. Reasons that seem absolutely real to you. I understand, Jamie—or, I may not understand everything, but I _do_ know that you're a victim in this, too." He swallowed again. "And I'm sorry—I still doubt your relationship with the Doctor is healthy, but you seem to have made him a sort of focus, a touchstone, and I'm sorry I ever suggested taking that away from you. You have to understand. I wouldn't have done anything without your agreement. I couldn't have. Our staff counselor trusts the Doctor, gods know why; he made a point of getting to her first. If you'd just told me to mind my own business and gone back to your room—I wouldn't have liked it, but legally, I couldn't have kept the Doctor away from you. You have to believe me, Jamie, I _never_ meant to do this to you. I would never want to put anyone through this sort of pain."

Jamie studied him. He looked sincere. Frightened, but sincere.

"Would you—" Oscar hesitated. "Would you really kill me, Jamie?"

Jamie didn't answer. Oscar let out a long, slow breath.

And there it was. Jamie had lost. Oscar no longer believed that Jamie would murder him, and without a hostage there was nothing Jamie could do. _No, never my memories, no . . ._ "I want you to do something," Jamie said, ignoring the churning in his stomach. "If you care as much as you say, I need you to do something."

"Tell them not to touch your memories?" Oscar nodded carefully, still conscious of the dirk. "I can do that."

Jamie shook his head. "You canna stop them, if they decide to do it. You're naught but a mortal man. Nay, tell the Doctor where they've taken me. I want you to swear by something sacred that you'll tell the Doctor."

"I swear," Oscar said, "in Lord Ganesha's name, I'll tell the Doctor where the police take you." Jamie's incomprehension must have shown on his face, because Oscar added, "My patron deity. Lord of overcoming obstacles."

It was more or less like swearing by a patron saint, Jamie decided. "All right." He sheathed his dirk.

The painful blue bolt that hit him a moment later seemed like cheating, but then, he hadn't made his bargain with the police.

~~~~~~~~

The purpose of the blue bolt was apparently to destroy Jamie's ability to move on his own, and it did that quite efficiently. The first effect was uncontrolled twitching, like a fit. When the police ran up to put irons on him, he could barely move his fingers. He tried to work the feeling back into them as they carried him toward the ominous gray car-beastie—of _course_ it was the gray one—but he had limited success.

He was helpless. Trussed up and paralyzed; they even took his dirk.

If they tried to take his memories, Jamie thought morbidly, would he have a chance to try to bite through his tongue? Because they would learn from their mistakes, they'd scour his heart this time too, and he didn't think he could bear going back to the aftermath of war without the memory of the Doctor to comfort him. He'd rather die. Those times, wordless and hidden though they have been, had kept him walking. That's why that tune had stayed in his mind; his heart was trying to talk to him. For forty days and forty nights, they rode through red blood to the knee, but that _wasn't the end of the song—_ there was wonder and bright magic in the world as well—and who could possibly march onward without some such promise?

There was a dark cell in the back of the gray car-beastie, with two ominous masked jailers. Jamie rather expected them to beat him, but they did nothing but lock his manacles to the wall.

He could wiggle his fingers now, but his legs were still limp.

What if the use of his limbs never came back to him? His blood ran cold at the very thought.

He was tormenting himself with fear, and knew it, but he couldn't stop imagining. Couldn't stop thinking about the things he knew happened in dungeons, and the worse torments that might be possible with magic. He couldn't keep from clutching his memories close to himself, like a frightened child cowering under his blankets. And what they might be doing to Kirstie, or the Doctor—

The car-beastie rocked slightly, and then was still.

The guards exchanged glances. After a moment, the larger of the two guards got up and poked a green spot on the wall of the cell. "Driver," he said peevishly.

There was no answer.

He pressed the spot harder. "Driver!"

"Yes?" the wall said.

Jamie forgot how to breathe.

"What's the problem? Why have we stopped?"

"Terribly sorry," the voice from the wall said blithely. "I just need to pick up some supplies for my bonsai mountains. Won't be a minute."

The guard stared at the green spot. Jamie couldn't read his expression under the mask, but he imagined it to be rather like someone finding a live hedgehog in his ale. "What."

"Bonsai mountains," the voice went on. A rich voice with a slight lilt to it; new, but already the most welcome sound in the universe. Even when talking rubbish—no, scratch that, _especially_ when talking rubbish. "It's all a matter of microcosmic geology and weather systems. Aficionados talk about the Himalayas or the Dragon's Spine on Mirova Secundus, but I've found the Sierra Nevadas to be challenging enough in their own modest way. It can be so difficult to locate good miniaturized sand . . ."

The guard was utterly focused on the voice coming from the wall, looking at it as if he could _force_ it to make sense with sheer willpower. So it was simplicity itself for the smaller guard to shoot the larger one in the back with a blue ray. He convulsed and fell.

The smaller guard swept her helmet off, letting her hair fall freely. "Kirstie!" Jamie tried to say, only it came out more, "Grrsmg!"

"I didna kill him," Kirstie said breathlessly. "Did I? I dinna mean to kill him, I've never _done_ this before—"

"No, you did quite well," the Doctor assured her. "Half a moment, and I'll help you uncuff Jamie."


	6. Chapter 6

"They never could have taken your memories," the Doctor told Jamie as he rifled through medical supply cupboards. They were back at the hospital, largely because the TARDIS was back at the hospital, hidden in this very storage room. Kirstie was already inside. "This isn't my world," the Doctor went on, "and these people are, on the whole, a far more harmless sort. They never developed the capacity to edit minds. And I must admit, I never realized how it might look, controlling your treatment the way I did. All in all, it's rather a stroke of luck that I had such a pleasant conversation with the staff counselor. We spent several hours just talking classical cartoons—oh, _excellent."_ He picked up a small black wand-thing, presumably some piece of arcane medical equipment. "I was looking for one of these."

"Something you need for my eye?" Jamie said. He felt foolish and downcast. All that worry, all of what he'd put Oscar through—all for nothing.

"No, I've just always wanted one." The Doctor twirled the object in his fingers and then put it away in a pocket, where it failed to make any appreciable bulge.

Jamie looked down. "Maybe I've forgotten too much," he said softly.

The Doctor looked at him curiously. "What do you mean?"

"Oscar dinna deserve to have me threaten him. He's nervous as a hare, but not a bad man for all that. You had to steal that car-beastie to rescue me, which means you're probably a wanted man yourself. And all for naught, because I couldna remember anything about your country beyond _crystal sky._ I—" He had _panicked._ Since when did he panic? "Didna think it through."

"No," the Doctor said, "you didn't. But you also didn't do any lasting harm." He sat down on the box beside Jamie, close enough to touch. "You could think of this as a failure, yes. I'm sorry that you went through it, and sorrier still that you were in danger. But for all that, I have to admit that it eases my mind."

Jamie frowned at him. "What d'ye mean?"

"When I first saw you on the moor—I was afraid you had changed. I was afraid that your personality had been damaged, that after what they'd done to you, you wouldn't be _my_ Jamie. But this afternoon, you suspected that you'd have to face my people again. That your memories would be removed again, perhaps more efficiently this time. It must have seemed like the most horrific possible fate, and you still weren't willing to kill an innocent man. You are, in every detail, the same Jamie McCrimmon I knew, and the universe is lucky to have you." He shrugged slightly. "As for Ward Administrator Oscar Pathan, it's true that he had a staggeringly unpleasant day. But now _he_ knows that he still cares about patients when he's frightened half out of his mind. It will probably never come up again. But it's a good thing to discover about oneself all the same. Isn't that right, Pathan?"

Jamie turned quickly. Oscar was standing in the door, looking awkward.

"Er," Jamie said. He was almost certain he'd never had to apologize for holding a weapon to someone's throat. "Did I really hurt you?"

Oscar lifted his hand to his neck, which bore a slightly off-color blotch, as if he'd somehow painted over the cut. "No, it's fine. I'm fine." He took a breath, let it out as if he wasn't sure what he was going to say, and then tried again. "There's no such thing as time travel."

"Ah, you've been doing your research!" The Doctor beamed.

"I looked up," Oscar hesitated, "Culloden. And I reviewed his dental scans. Either he's been a prisoner since birth in a place that filters out all water additives, or he's from an extreme Luddite colony, or—there's still no such thing as time travel."

"Keeping Jamie prisoner," the Doctor mused, as if he'd never considered the concept before. "What do you think, Pathan? As easy as it sounds?"

Oscar chewed on that. "Good point."

"Even if he weren't capable in his own right," the Doctor went on, "there's Kirstie, who looks up to him rather a lot, from what I can tell. And me. When I say that I'd move worlds to keep Jamie sane and whole—decide for yourself whether or not it's a metaphor." The Doctor moved toward the TARDIS. "And now, I think, it's time for us to go. Kirstie is waiting for us. Although, Pathan—"

"Wait." Oscar moved forward. "Let me at least take a last look at that eye."

The Doctor looked at Jamie. "Aye, all right," Jamie said, and tilted his head so that Oscar could remove the bandages. He was exceptionally gentle. "Oh! I see—" He blinked several times, then slumped. "Not much. Dark and not so dark."

"It'll be at least a week before you have more vision than that," Oscar told him, replacing the bandages. "You came within centimeters of losing the eye entirely. This smart-bandage is specially designed to keep the moisture levels balanced while the eyelid and tear ducts heal, so don't go replacing it with stone-age remedies. The bone has been reconstructed but it's still knitting, so be _very_ careful with it. And you'll probably have to have another round of treatment to prevent scarring, so if you won't stay here, please get it seen to somewhere. Did you understand all that?"

"Never a word," Jamie said cheerily, "but _he_ did."

Oscar looked at the Doctor, who was stealthily pocketing another of those medical tools he liked. "I'm listening," the Doctor assured him.

Oscar looked back to Jamie. "How _did_ you get injured?"

"Got shot. With a proper musket, not one of your blue crackly ones."

"And after that," the Doctor put in, not looking at either one of them, "he apparently led a group of refugees in a seven-hour march over rough country, saving their lives, and didn't collapse from exhaustion until he was quite certain they were all safe. I wouldn't worry about Jamie's head; it seems to be made of the same stuff as his determination. Administrator, before we go—Ragni is right."

Oscar blinked, confused. "What?"

"Nialla Ragni is right."

"I don't know a Nialla Ragni."

The Doctor smiled. "Just remember it. You'll work out what I mean, in time . . . come along, Jamie."

Jamie followed him.

~~~~~~~~

"You have," the Doctor told Kirstie and Jamie, after the TARDIS had taken off, "a choice. You have a world full of choices, in fact, but this is a fairly important one."

Jamie had a pretty good notion of what he was going to say. _"I'm_ coming with you."

The Doctor looked at him, and his eyes seemed old and troubled. "Sooner or later, it'll have to end, you know. No matter how many dimensions of time you control, there's always one that keeps moving. I mentioned, earlier, that the people who would have stopped me from helping you are occupied with large problems of their own. If those problems get much worse, I might have to return, of my own free will this time . . ."

"If you're running into a fight," Jamie said, "I'll watch your back."

The Doctor gave him a slight, brief smile, but it wasn't a happy one. "If I am, it won't be that sort of fight, I'm afraid."

Jamie was about to say that it didn't matter what sort of fight it was, but he realized that wasn't practical. There were some situations in which he might just slow the Doctor down. "If it ever comes down to sword and musket, then," he said, "promise me you'll let me help you."

"It won't."

"Promise anyway. I—" Jamie swallowed. "I don't want to see you get hurt."

"If I'm ever roped into a swordfight, or a gunfight," the Doctor said, "there's no-one in the universe I'd rather have at my back. But, Jamie, you shouldn't worry so much. I've been traveling for a while, I have some practice getting out of scrapes—I can even fence. Although it's been years since I actually have. I wonder where I put my foils . . ." He patted his pockets vaguely, as if he expected to find a couple of swords in there.

Which, for all Jamie knew, he might. "So, it's settled. I'm going with you."

"For a while."

"For a while," he conceded. "Kirstie? D'ye want to come with us?"

Kirstie hesitated, then shook her head and looked down. "I—canna. I _want_ to, but I canna. I'm not grand, I'm not brave, I'm—" She swallowed. "I'm not a lady. I'm sorry, I didna mean to mislead you, but—I'm as lowborn as can be."

"Ah, come on! _I'm_ not grand, and he dinna used to be." He pointed his thumb at the Doctor, who was now perusing his bookshelves—either looking for a book or his fencing equipment, Jamie wasn't certain.

"If you're going to steal clothing," the Doctor said, "why not do it with style? That was certainly what my third self thought, and I think I might have been onto something."

Kirstie blinked. "You stole—"

"My clothes," the Doctor said, "my TARDIS, Jamie's dirk—" He handed the last item back to Jamie, who sheathed it.

"But—how did you even get—you really are Robin Goodfellow," Kirstie finished in a small voice. "Aren't you?"

"Who can say? I've been a lot of interesting people; I suspect that even I don't know how many. But as for courage—it has nothing to do with not being frightened. And it can be learned. Take it from someone who knows."

"Do you . . ." Kirstie hesitated. "Do you _want_ me to come with you?"

"Aye," Jamie said instantly.

"I think," the Doctor said, "we would both welcome the company. Jamie and I have always traveled with others, you know. And I'd say we enjoyed every minute of it, except you know how it is . . . Cybermen, giant crustaceans . . ." He waved his hand vaguely. "Still. To me, traveling with friends is half the point of traveling at all."

"Then—" Kirstie took a deep breath and let it out again. "Aye."

The Doctor smiled. "Welcome aboard."


End file.
